05/04/23 Mount Pleasant Bulletin

[jimallen]

Hi, here is the Mount Pleasant bulletin of 5 April, comments welcome!

STOP PRESS
As this bulletin was going to print, the RM Team update
arrived, saying "talks with CWU conclude without
agreement". So we see that the "10% on pay 3 year
deal" is actually 6% (it's dishonest to add the other 2%
+2%). And they haven't budged on most cuts, not in VR
pay, nor any of the changes they want - with the
exception of existing employee allowances, and a
derisory shift on start times. They want the union to put
it to the vote. They say they "have nothing more to
give". We will have to see about that!

WHAT NEXT?
So now surely we need new strike dates? A strike now
would mean we can call Thompson's bluff! Didn't he
threaten to put RM into special administration if we
struck? What's more, he claimed that just 18 days of
strike - stretched over 8 months - lost them £350-450m
in profits! At that rate of profit, no way could RM be
insolvent!

... AND ON YOUTUBE
One thing Dave Ward already said (YouTube, last
week), is that the 3-year pay deal on offer was "not
good enough". Of course it isn't good enough. Inflation
goes up every month, so no, we can't agree pay rises
which are fixed 3 years in advance! (Unless the deal
says wages go up each year with inflation PLUS!)

WHAT WE KNOW
As for the 6% on offer for 2023 in option 1, plus £500
lump sum, that's hardly going to cover the cost of living
hikes this April: RPI 13.8%, food up 18.4% and then
council tax, water, energy bills, fuel, rent, interest rates,
etc., etc... all going UP!

CAN'T TRUST A WORD THEY SAY
The RM Board's threat to declare RM insolvent if we
strike was interpreted as a ploy by some pundits: an
attempt to free themselves from dwindling USO-required
Letters and retain the profitable Parcels business... But
just how would this even be possible, given how
intertwined they are?
PS: After Brexit, Britain was no longer bound by EU
legislation that made the USO a legal obligation in every
EU country... So is it still bound by British legislation? If
so, for how long..?

LIES AND DAMN LIES
Dave Ward said the union "acknowledges the serious
state of the company's finances"... Well, at least he's
asked for "independent access" to evidence of these
purported financial difficulties. We'd all like to see the
"books"! But if RM is really losing money, would we
accept to lose out? Of course not. The bosses can
take it back from their shareholders.

FULL-TIME'S WHAT WE NEED!
With this "realignment" or resign (whatever it's now
called!), we see management's only "offering" 25-hour
part-time duties! Yet most part-timers currently do more
hours than that. So how can we sign for these jobs?
We've been told we can keep our extra hours for now...
but there's no guarantee for the future, let alone the
offer of the full-time jobs we need!

CUTTING HOURS
And same thing for those of us who were doing morning
full-time duties to cover the extra load coming from
Romford. We've been put back onto part-time duties...
meaning we've lost several hours pay! How can we
accept that?

FALSE HOPES
Managers are attempting to get some of us - who
they've decided are "supernumerary" - to move around
and do any job, according to their whims. Are they
hoping they'll be able cover more duties this way?

ROYAL DELIVERY MAYHEM
As predicted, W1's resign has created a mess... Some
of our workmates were let go without anyone replacing
them and with the new "absorbed" duties to deal with, it
takes us much longer to prep in the morning. So we all
leave later and bags of undelivered mail pile up. But
hey, that's the DUMs' problem.

HOW'S THAT?
Managers have cut 13 minutes from our weekday
delivery finish times, only to add an extra hour to
Saturday duties! How was this agreed? And BTW, if
they think it will help them get all that piled-up mail
delivered, they have another think coming!

WHY MUST THE SHOW GO ON?
Since last week, 4-Nighters on medium packets have
been covering the PSM workers' breaks so the machine
never stops, spitting out packets and mis-sorts all night
long. If the PSM was given the maintenance break it
needs, then we could (all) have an extra break. On
nights, it's essential!

PSM PROTEST
Yes, a couple of weeks ago, the PSM went on strike
due to overwork; one of its parts needed changing... and
this took management a good couple of days to sort out,
since it had to be flown in from Ireland... They reverted
to hand-sorting, but sadly for them, since their
automation has cut so many hands, there was a parcel jam!

WE'D RATHER PLAY IT ON OUR PHONES...
RMs new parcel collection "product" causes us plenty of
headaches! Customers can have dozens of boxes for
us to collect, leaving us playing Tetris trying to fit them
into the back of our vans - alongside everything else
we've still got to collect!

[bogues2009]

I am sorry but neither you or the union can do much about this unfortunately. There are things they cannot openly discuss: both RM and union agree to CO2 reduction targets and both parties are aware of sickness/death data and insurers ring the alarm about excess mortality/disability rates which are way above the long term average. Union blindly recommended and terrified their members into taking part in 'experimental gene therapies' (legal/insurers language-not mine) and now they have to accept reality that the job cannot look like it has been before. Like Darwin said: 'It is not the strongest who survived but the ones willing to adapt'. Deliberate inflation creation by the ones in power add fuel to the problem as human labour will have to be replaced by automation due to cost and health reasons. Also ideologically they aim into what British Government calls: human augmentation transition but thats for the next episode to discuss:)